Schools can often stimulate us with extreme bad experiences, and those experiences are difficult to forget. It affects our life in drastic ways, the way how people are treated in schools can actually impact their personality and level of mental growth in several ways. Therefore, it is essential to check that students are having a good time and they are not being bullied by anyone. Bullying has rapidly increased in our classrooms; majority of the students report cases of bullying. Bullying is an extreme form of dehumanization of others through mockery, violence and abuse; bullying must be heavily condoned by the schools, and they must impose stringent laws against bullying.
There are students who often form a group to dehumanize and bully people, they mostly pick on students who do not have many friends. Sometimes they can go to different levels to torture other students; they try the best ways possible to create fear and terror into the minds of other students, to ensure that, nobody complains about them to the authority. These bullies usually work by trying to instill terror into the minds of the majority of the people, this will help them continue doing what they are doing as none of the students dare to file a complaint against them. That’s why, it is necessary to talk to students about bullying, so that they actually recognize that it is wrong and try to help others who go through it.
There are a few preventive measures educational institutions can take to prevent bullying
Teach the kids empathy and kindness-
Imparting good moral values to students since a very early age can help them become better individuals. Educators and schools’ authorities must ensure that students engage in activities that boost their emotional and social learning. It is necessary for students to be more tolerant and accept uniqueness. Many bullies are those who are insecure about themselves, they bully others in order to feel good about their own personality. Bullying is basically, the reflection of what’s going on in our minds- bullies suffer from insecurities and poor image about themselves. Thus, counseling sessions must be offered to students, they should freely talk about the problems they face- this will encourage them to accept themselves. Once we start ensuring that students are accepting themselves, and see that they don’t hold any conflicting opinions about themselves, we can also let them respect people around them. Imparting the importance of kindness and empathy is very essential to kids, they must learn these values and try not to give a hard time to their peers.
Pay attention to Gateway Indicators-
Teachers must ensure to identify visible patterns of bullying; they must pay close attention to understand and recognize gateway behaviors among students. There are some beginning patterns of bullying, which is almost common to all. We know that educators can miss out on these indicators because the students behave differently in front of them, therefore, the authorities must ensure that they have teachers keeping an eye into these gateway behaviors closely. It could happen by communicating with kids once in a while, or by being aware about what the students are doing.
It is very important to note that it is necessary to put a restriction of these patterns of behavior in the early stage, because prolonged engagement with such negative forms of conduct can turn someone into a bully. Educators must identify some key behaviors like- name calling, prolonged staring, eye rolling, laughing cruelly, stalking or spying. Strong interventions must be made when such behaviors are shown by the students; these behaviors lead the students to start bullying others, therefore, they must be immediately stopped.
Maintain communication with the students-
Educators think that developing inter-personal bonds with students is wrong, and by doing so the students won’t be intimidated by them anymore. This entire way to dealing with students is extremely problematic, because we must be allowed to communicate with our teachers freely. But, the entire way of dealing with kids is rapidly changing and creating a barrier between the free flow of communication among the teachers and students. Teachers should work on gaining the trust of their students in order to know their problems- this will help the teachers to maintain a healthy environment in class.
They should also choose a class representative to report them incidents taking place in the classrooms. Teachers cannot be available to encounter everything that is happening in class; therefore, they must assign duties to some of the students to inform them the day-to-day incidents happening in class. This will very easily help them to know if bullying is prevalent is their classrooms. Therefore, it is important for the educator to put an eye on their students.
Last but not the least, schools must organize bullying awareness students. Students must be encouraged to report any problems immediately, this will put a check and balance to the getaway indicators among the students and allow the victims to come in front and report their problems.
